EMA Plans to Nominate New Executive Director

The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Management Board will meet on October 1, 2015 for an extraordinary session to nominate an executive director for the agency from a shortlist of candidates provided by the European Commission, which is running the selection procedure.

The nominated candidate will be invited to make a statement to the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) on October 13, 2015 and answer questions from members of the European Parliament. Following this statement and subsequent appointment, after signing a contract, the executive director will take up official duties at the agency.

The process for selecting a new executive director of the EMA followed a judgment by the European Union Civil Service Tribunal in November 2014 in a case involving an appeal by an individual against the selection procedure in 2011 for the appointment of the executive director of the EMA.

At the decision in 2014, the court, on purely formal grounds, annulled the European Commission’s decision adopting a shortlist of potential candidates for the position of executive director at that time, and as a result, the decision by the Management Board to select Guido Rasi from the shortlist and appoint him as executive director on October 6, 2011 was annulled. The case was brought by an individual on January 9, 2012 appealing against the decision by the European Commission not to include him on the shortlist of candidates for the position of executive director of the EMA. According to the agency’s founding regulation, Regulation (EC) 726/2004, the management board can only select from the candidates shortlisted by the European Commission.